I'd also just like to say I think Literotica should do a new author award to help those just starting out within the year expand their fanbase. Just a thought.

That's a great idea! I like the sound of that.

New Special Rounds: Best New Writer and Best New Poet

Can the admin do this next year? Or begin it now, while the nominations are still going on?

Something else the admin can do that would indeed help keep the annual contest fun and keep people nominating and voting, which was suggested on "Most Literary" thread by Valint, is that winners of the Most Influential Writer/Poet aren't eligible to win again for X number of years.

Please take these into consideration, Laurel. I certainly want to avoid excess negativity, too, but when the good points of a healthy debate are not utilized to improve a contest, when nothing changes and the same loopholes and patterns are seen over and over again, your site members become understandably frustrated.

__________________Typically I write in Sci-Fi & Fantasy settings and characters are often non-human. The action runs from consent to non-consent to BDSM to group sex and more.

This thread is for discussion of the Special Contest round of the Readers Choice Awards.

This is not a thread to question author nominations or the contest themselves. It is to discuss ideas for future Readers Choice awards.

Please note that posts containing trolling, name-calling, and/or other forms of negativity will be removed. If you don't enjoy contests, that's fine - you are free to not participate. Please do not ruin everyone else's fun.

__________________
"A great future doesn't require a great past." - William Chapman

As a launching point, ideas are listed below of which I'm aware, which have been brought up in years past and I think are worth discussion.

If there's a possible, unforeseen/unintended negative impact to instating a particular rule suggestion, fellow forum members, please mention it for discussion. Too much restriction is not what I'd like to see. I want to see a balance, in the spirit of a good competition which brings out variety, not a singularity.

1. Possible new addition to Special Round categories:
Best New Author publishing that Year
Best New Poet publishing that Year

Edit: Restriction: New Authors/Poets are not eligible for the "Most Influential" Categories, or A new author/poet can be nominated for Most Influential, but cannot be in the voting for "Best New" at the same time.

2. Most requested change: If a chapter in a series is to be nominated, that series must be finished (as far as a reasonable person can tell). The story cannot be on-going.

3. Consider pros/cons: Separate true short stories (even add a word-count maximum) from novels/series in the voting? This would potentially double all voting categories, and since there is prize money involved, I see why it isn't quite as simple as that for the site admin. Hence, why a story being finished in that year to be eligible is more reasonable to me.

4. Consider a similar limitation on winning as what is in the Monthly Contests. For the Monthlies, an author cannot win again for 6 months after receiving a prize. Place a similar limit on these prizes for this annual contest.

5. For "Most Influential Writer/Poet" and "Most Literary" and "Most Helpful Editor": Require a persuasive statement on why the nominee deserves the award. Disqualify single-name/no justification nominations. Include the persuasive statements with the author's name during the actual voting so that voters can see why that name is there.

6. Possible written additions for Laurel to mention in her announcements in the 3 Sexiest character categories, and something which aids a nomination being considered in the final voting (i.e., nominations with added detail receive an additional "point" or something). These are not required, but they help the final score/selection:

a. Provide tags and a description of why a nominated story is memorable.
b. Provide thoughts on the character and why they are sexy.
c. Make an attempt to persuade people who have not read the story to check it out.

These are my thoughts on how to improve this contest for future users, offered in good faith and will, to reduce frustrations and to provide reasons why member participation truly makes a difference during this event.

__________________Typically I write in Sci-Fi & Fantasy settings and characters are often non-human. The action runs from consent to non-consent to BDSM to group sex and more.

I would totally be in favor of adding that category. I think it would be a great incentive to new authors to join, write and write well.

I'm not sure about making them ineligible for "Most Influential," though it would be very, very difficult to imagine a new author becoming most influential on one year, or part of a year.

So far as chapter stories are concerned, I have posted novels as chapters and in one long story. Would one long story of 80,000 words be considered ineligible for awards not in novels? For example, JoeDreamer wrote a Western novel that is somewhere around 30 Lit. pages. He wrote it in three months and posted it as one piece. I intend to nominate it for "Best Novel." Would it then be ineligible for "Most Literary/genre transcending?" I am certainly in favor of chapter stories that are not finished being in their own category. The sad fact is, they may never BE finished. That happens all the time.

Just questions and opinions. I don't usually post in the forums, and likely won't do so again, but this is very interesting.

So far as chapter stories are concerned, I have posted novels as chapters and in one long story. Would one long story of 80,000 words be considered ineligible for awards not in novels?

I'd probably recommend breaking things down by page count rather than just having a single-chapter/multiple-chapter dichotomy.

Something like:
* Best X story (short form): Single-chapter stories consisting of 10 or fewer Literotica pages
* Best X story (long form): Stories consisting of more than 10 Literotica pages, which may or may not be spread across multiple chapters

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackrandl1958

I am certainly in favor of chapter stories that are not finished being in their own category. The sad fact is, they may never BE finished. That happens all the time.

'Best Unfinished Story' would be an interesting special category for older stories: Nominations limited to stories for which two or more chapters have been posted, have not been completed, the most recent chapter was posted X years ago, where X is a multiple of 5 (e.g., for the 2017 nominations, we'd be looking at stories whose last chapter was published in 2012, 2007, 2002, etc.), and that have not previously won the award.

(The date restrictions might be overly technical, but the idea is that you don't just want the same stories being nominated every year.)

We've been trying to get chapters out of the year end awards and everywhere else as they are not complete stories for six or seven years now at least. I'll believe it when I see it happen.

Not sure when or if it's going to happen, TxRad, I'm not making that claim. I'm of three minds here:

Optimist: Well! Women didn't win the right to vote in six or seven years, so just keep debating/discussing/asking and sooner or later, things will change!

Pessimist: Laurel might simply be giving us a place to air our thoughts in civil discourse and may not take any action on suggestions in this thread.

Realist: Oh well. I need to talk and hear some thoughts from others on it, because suppressing discourse and debate under the claim of "keeping negativity out" of the contest actually doesn't create positivity for the contest.

The only thing positive I could make out of this is to work within the current rules without spending all my time complaining about them and maybe look at one or two the biggest weaknesses of this contest: Lack of awareness and lack of an easy way to communicate with many readers unless you're on another social website as well.

I've been reaching out to the nominees through their Feedback portal and at least letting them know, as well as suggesting a few things they can do to spread the word. Pebble in a pond. It'll be something for this year, and while I'm not certain anything will come of it, I'm happy Laurel has been given this "safe space" where we won't be censored for discussion.

__________________Typically I write in Sci-Fi & Fantasy settings and characters are often non-human. The action runs from consent to non-consent to BDSM to group sex and more.

I'm not sure about making them ineligible for "Most Influential," though it would be very, very difficult to imagine a new author becoming most influential on one year, or part of a year.

With all due respect, it is very easy for me to imagine because it already happened. The winner last year in 4 categories, including Most Influential, was a new author. First year. He just hit the "Twilight-50 Shades" sweet-spot (the male version; it exists, especially in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category) and milked it for all it was worth. That was why I suggested the restriction if that category existed.

Quote:

So far as chapter stories are concerned, I have posted novels as chapters and in one long story. Would one long story of 80,000 words be considered ineligible for awards not in novels? For example, JoeDreamer wrote a Western novel that is somewhere around 30 Lit. pages. He wrote it in three months and posted it as one piece. I intend to nominate it for "Best Novel." Would it then be ineligible for "Most Literary/genre transcending?" I am certainly in favor of chapter stories that are not finished being in their own category. The sad fact is, they may never BE finished. That happens all the time.

Just questions and opinions. I don't usually post in the forums, and likely won't do so again, but this is very interesting.

Well, then, I appreciate your stepping out a bit for this.

Valint has a good idea with the "short/long" form that addresses single-submission/multiple submission issue and converts it to Lit page numbers instead.
What would that look like as far as adding excessive/unreasonable burden to the admin? That would still double the Categories to be voted on (not counting the Special Rounds).

On another question, assuming the story is finished, no matter how long or short, I'd think any would be eligible for "Most Literary" but we would have the likely debate/complaint that long novels/series may have larger fanbases than a short story, even though a short story is easier to read and vote on during the contest itself.

I always thought that the huge majority of people who vote on a series are doing so because they either recognize the author name and/or they have already read it. Very few, it would seem, begin a nominated novel to judge it for voting while the contest is going on (I mean, that might be the ideal to strive for which few of us attain. I know I wouldn't have time to do that for every novel in the voting).

So does this make it worth separating out short form vs. long form? Under what circumstances/for what categories? (I like that new terminology; +/-10 Lit pages as a theoretical standard, it's a fresh take on an old debate.)

I'd be curious just how difficult it is for Laurel to short this data out beyond looking at the score and number of votes. We'd be asking her to research every single story in the Categories list to determine herself if it was eligible: Is it finished? (how easily would she even be able to tell?) How long is it? (check for Lit page number, if that's even her view.) Have they won in the last 2-3 years? (Archives!) She might be going through 10 stories, setting ones aside before finding the 4 that we vote on. Now multiply that by the categories we have now, and possibly double it for "short/long form".... Oh! And there are other contests going on, other events, 100+ submissions to get out the door every single day, PMs to answer, issues with the site, complaints/questions from the users to address...

You know, I'm beginning to see some reasons why that part of the competition will probably never change.

So what would be the bare reasonable?

1. Best New Author/Poet.

2. Some limit on winning the previous year(s) as with the Monthly contests.

3. I still like the idea of a required, persuasive statement being included with each nominee during the nominations and posted for voting, so people had some idea what the Hell they were voting on. It's also a good opportunity to list the contributions many of these nominess have provided the site at large, such as the reasons given for Harddaysknight and blackrandl1958 being see as influential beyond simply submitting popular stories. They give back to their community.

4. And personally, I still want to hear more about the sexy characters and why I should read them. Tags, quirks, examples. Something to intrigue me. A bit more than "I fap to this" or "they're awesome!" would be nice. But that's just my personal gossip chip being rubbed.

The most difficult one to see a reasonable change is, in fact, the question of single submissions vs. chapters, but I still see a story being finished that year as a requirement for eligibility as reasonable. If Laurel needed help determining whether something was finished, maybe that is something those of us participating in the contest can chime in on. Hmmm...

Yes, just more thoughts. I don't want to make it too complicated, but I still see room for improvement.

__________________Typically I write in Sci-Fi & Fantasy settings and characters are often non-human. The action runs from consent to non-consent to BDSM to group sex and more.

A category I would love to see is Best Multi-Chapter Collabration. Two authors writing the same story from their individual view points. That would take talent, a new genre and an amazing editor, who would have to look at both styles.

A category I would love to see is Best Multi-Chapter Collabration. Two authors writing the same story from their individual view points. That would take talent, a new genre and an amazing editor, who would have to look at both styles.

Would love it if that category existed, and you could link the same story back to each of the authors' profiles.